Director Steve McQueen, center, (C) accepts the Best Picture award for “12 Years a Slave.”

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LOS ANGELES – It was a year said to be stuffed with great movies – in any other awards season, many in Hollywood said, several of the nominated movies could win best picture. But at the end of the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, the movie considered a frontrunner since its premiere in September ended up taking the top prize, in an evening that left several movies shut out of the proceedings.

“12 Years a Slave” won best picture, giving the historical drama top honors after earlier wins in a 3 1/2 hour ceremony for best adapted screenplay and best supporting actress for newcomer Lupita Nyong’o.

The evening’s biggest winner, numerically, was “Gravity,” which won seven of the 10 awards for which it was nominated. Many of the outer space drama’s wins came in the technical categories, but in a nod to the movie’s years-long undertaking, the Academy split the best picture and best director awards by giving Alfonso Cuarón from “Gravity” the directing prize.

The acting categories offered few surprises: Matthew McConaughey won the best actor award for his role as a Texas man who contracts AIDS in “Dallas Buyers Club,” and Cate Blanchett won best actress for her performance in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine,” playing a woman who suffers a nervous breakdown after her financier husband is arrested.

“Thank you so much, Woody, for casting me,” said Ms. Blanchett in her acceptance speech. She was the only repeat winner among the acting categories, having won best supporting actress in 2005 for playing Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator.”

Mr. McConaughey’s co-star, Jared Leto, won best supporting actor for his performance in “Dallas Buyers Club” as a transgender AIDS patient, and the movie also won the prize for makeup and hairstyling.

“Dallas Buyers Club” hopped around Hollywood for more than a decade with several lead actors attached, owing to the increased difficulty of finding major studios willing to distribute smaller prestige films with little box-office guarantee. It was distributed by Focus Features, the specialty film unit of Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures. Universal announced in October it was restructuring Focus to emphasize more commercial movies.

In one of the best-received speeches of the evening, Ms. Nyong’o acknowledged Patsey, the real-life slave whom she portrayed, and ended her speech by saying, “No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.” “12 Years a Slave” was distributed by Fox Searchlight, the specialty film division of Twentieth Century Fox. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox Inc., which until recently was part of the same company as The Wall Street Journal.

But even in a year filled with well-regarded movies, there were high-profile shut-outs. “American Hustle,” which tied with “Gravity” this year for 10 nominations, didn’t win any awards. Neither did “Nebraska,” “Captain Phillips” or “The Wolf of Wall Street,” all of which were nominated in multiple categories.

Producer Megan Ellison, the 28-year-old heiress behind Annapurna Pictures, helped back “American Hustle” and a second best picture nominee, Spike Jonze’s “Her.” The only win among the two movies’ 15 collective nominations went to Mr. Jonze, who won the best original screenplay prize.

The Oscars don’t have a strong record of pulling off musical numbers without dissolving into campy YouTube infamy, but such performances offered several of the ceremony’s most memorable moments. Pharrell Williams, singing his nominated song “Happy” from “Despicable Me 2,” stepped down from the stage to shimmy with Meryl Streep. Bette Midler sang “Wind Beneath My Wings” as part of a memorial tribute to dead film makers and actors, and received a standing ovation. Broadway star Idina Menzel – announced as something like “Adele Dazeem” in presenter John Travolta’s butchered introduction – sang “Let It Go” from Walt Disney Co.’s blockbuster “Frozen” shortly before it was named best original song.

The evening’s host, Ellen DeGeneres, seemed like an intentional tonic to last year’s controversial host, “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane. At several points throughout the evening, Ms. DeGeneres ventured into the audience to mug and bring stratospheric stars down to Earth. She took a smartphone “selfie” with celebrities like Angelina Jolie (the image quickly became the most retweeted message of all time on Twitter). She handed out slices of pizza to Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lawrence.

She even dressed the part of a family-friendly emcee. After Pink performed a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” in a tribute to “The Wizard of Oz,” Ms. DeGeneres came on stage dressed as Glinda the Good Witch.

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